The
Bulletin
Local Columns
Tell your lawmakers: No licenses for
illegal
immigrants
By
Richard F. LaMountain
Published: January 13. 2013 4:00AM PST
Last May Day,
Gov. John Kitzhaber informed demonstrators at the state Capitol he’d work to
change Oregon law and restore driver’s licenses to
illegal immigrants.
When the Legislature convenes in early February, he and his allies will seek to
deliver.
Lawmakers should have no part of it. If they do, our state will become a hub for
identity fraud, a magnet for illegal immigrants competing for work with Oregon’s
unemployed, and a virtually unimpeded conduit for Mexican drugs.
Let’s review some recent history.
Before 2008, Oregon issued licenses to applicants who had neither verifiable
Social Security numbers nor passports. But early that year, the Legislature and
then-Gov. Ted Kulongoski enacted a law (Senate Bill 1080) that required each
applicant to prove legal U.S. presence.
What drove their decision? “It appears," wrote Kulongoski, “that criminal
organizations both inside and outside Oregon are using Oregon’s permissive
standards in order to assist persons to illegally obtain driver licenses and
identification cards" and other “documents for which they are not eligible
either in this state or in the state in which they actually reside."
An example: Early in the last decade, a ring in Hillsboro helped thousands of
illegal immigrants, many from other states, to fraudulently obtain Oregon
licenses. Some of its operatives, The Oregonian reported, “admitting selling
envelopes with fake Portland-area addresses as proof of Oregon residency or
falsifying driver’s test applications for illegal immigrants."
If lawmakers negate Oregon’s legal-presence requirement for licenses, such
enterprises likely will flourish here again. And what can illegal immigrants do
with the licenses these enterprises would help them get?
Plenty. For illegal immigrants seeking jobs, notes the NumbersUSA Education and
Research Foundation, licenses “are accepted as proof of identity on the I-9 form
employers are required to complete to establish that new employees are legally
eligible to work in the United States." With licenses, then, illegal immigrants
could better compete, however fraudulently, for the jobs federal law reserves
for U.S. citizens and legal residents — of whom some 160,000 remain unemployed
in Oregon.
A license can serve as a “breeder document" for other wrongdoing as well. “Once
in possession of a driver’s license," notes the Federal Bureau of Investigation,
“a criminal is well on his way to using the false identity to facilitate a
variety of crimes, from money laundering to check fraud." Cases of this kind
involving illegal immigrants have occurred recently in, among other states,
Utah, Tennessee and Arkansas.
And consider drugs. “Mexican criminal groups are the primary drug traffickers
who utilize the state’s highway system to transport and distribute large
wholesale quantities of illicit drugs," maintained the Oregon Department of
Justice in a recent report. Illegal immigrants comprise a large percentage of
the traffickers’ retail operatives. And if, in the future, “a state trooper
stops someone transporting illicit drugs and the driver presents a driver’s
license issued by the state," notes Jim Ludwick, communications director of
Oregonians for Immigration Reform, “the trooper may lack probable cause to
search the car for contraband." Illegal immigrants’ access to licenses, then,
would enable traffickers to ply their trade — and addict our youth — more
easily.
In November, the Oregon corrections system contained 1,240 foreign nationals
being held for transfer to federal immigration authorities. Their yearly cost:
some $38 million. If illegal immigrants regained access to Oregon licenses, more
of them, many with criminal intent, would be drawn to our state. Some of these,
doubtless, would be apprehended and imprisoned. This would drive the number of
foreign inmates — and their cost to Oregon taxpayers — even higher.
Oregonians should tell their legislators: In this year’s session, reject
Kitzhaber’s effort to restore driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants.
— LaMountain, a former assistant editor of Conservative Digest magazine, serves
as vice president of
Oregonians for Immigration Reform
(oregonir.org).
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